The Walking Dead - Season 4 Premiere - Recap: Three Simple Questions

Credit: AMC

It's a question the show has always asked, and struggled against, as each season provides less and less reason for why these people should have any hope in the world whatsoever. Yet "30 Days Without An Accident" paints an almost idyllic picture of a small slice of peace amidst the zombie apocalypse. Approached from this perspective, it almost becomes a small town drama like Little House on the Prairie. It's the season premiere's most interesting narrative decision, and it proves to be a smart one, as there's a greater sense of loss when everything inevitably ends up going to hell. And everything is going to hell, sooner rather than later.

In the aftermath of the war with Woodbury, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the others have taken in the displaced residents of The Governor's former paradise. In addition, the group has created a council to serve as a form of self-governance, as their small community is expanding. Teams go on regular food/supply runs, while others help clear out the area around the fence when walkers begin piling up at the gate. They've even gotten into agriculture, raising animals and growing fruits and vegetables. Soon enough, Hershel (Scott Wilson) says, they'll have enough food to where they won't even have to make runs anymore. Everyone is slowly beginning to find peace again, with Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Glenn (Steven Yeun) enjoying married bliss while Daryl (Norman Reedus) enjoys newfound rock star popularity among the new citizens of their community due to his role as a provider and protector. Meanwhile, Carl (Chandler Riggs) has made a new friend or two among the new kids in the community, who regularly gather for "story time" in the prison library with Carol (Melissa McBride), who uses the stories as a way to teach the kids how to use knives without Rick finding out. And then there's Beth (Emily Kinney), who has herself a boyfriend in the form of the well-meaning Zack. Even Michonne (Danai Gurira) is smiling, having become closer with Carl. She even goes as far as to find comics for him during her own supply runs. All in all, people are happy.

Credit: Gene Page/AMC

But that doesn't last for long. Daryl goes on a supply run with Glenn, Zack, Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), and former Army medic/recovering alcoholic Bob Stookey (Larry Gilliard, Jr.), who nearly succumbs to the temptation to drink when he comes across a shelf of booze in the store. Unfortunately, this moment of weakness triggers a series of events that leads to disaster: when he decides not to take the alcohol, he places the bottle back on the shelf, and this tiny action causes the shelf to give way. The entire shelf collapses on top of him, with broken bottles everywhere, and it's that sound that alerts the walkers trapped on the roof, dead as the result of a downed helicopter. As they walk in the direction of the sound, the walkers tread on a structurally weak part of the roof, and before long, walkers are falling through the roof and into the store. It's a great visual, with the light penetrating the darkened store (in one particularly great shot, a walker hangs from the ceiling by his shirt, and for a moment, it looks as if he's being suspended by his entrails, caught between Heaven and Hell on Earth). The sequence itself is also pretty damn thrilling. Zack is an early casualty, devoured by a walker while the others hack a path through the relentless dead. In one of the most gory, gruesome kills I've seen on this show, Daryl curb-stomps a walker that is nearly getting its hands on the trapped Bob, and black blood just leaks out everywhere like a punctured can of soup. It's a moment of stomach-churning gore that really adds to the brutality of the sequence, even if it did feel a bit excessive (but then, complaining about gore on The Walking Dead is a zero-sum game. It's like complaining about nudity in a strip club).

Credit: AMC

The group is ultimately able to escape, but it casts a pall on everyone's formerly high spirits. Maggie learns that she isn't pregnant after all, but realizes she still wants to have kids. A lot of them. She rationalizes that the prison finally provides them with a safe place where raising a family actually seems viable. However, Glenn isn't so sure he wants to bring kids into this inherently messed-up world. "I don't want to be scared of living," Maggie tells him, and that could serve as a fitting summation of the theme of this episode, as the survivors are genuinely struggling to overcome their inherent mistrust of this world, and of the possibility that things could actually get better. For her part, Beth is pretty much numb to it all. When Daryl breaks the news of Zack's death to her, she's upset but her face remains eerily stoic. "I stopped crying a long time ago," she explains to Daryl, and it's easy to forget that this girl lost half her family when the walkers overtook the Greene family farm in season two. We can see how perpetual grief has changed her, as she solemnly removes the "3" from the "30" on the "Days Without An Accident" sign in her cell. It's a simple, poignant representation of how quickly things can go from peace to pandemonium. Loss is always just around the corner, and all anyone really has to hold onto is each other, as utterly trite as that might sound. So when Beth hugs Daryl at the end of the scene, it's far more touching than it probably should have been.

Credit: AMC

The other big story this week is a more ponderous one. It features Rick going out hunting just outside the prison, and encountering a disheveled young Irish woman named Clara (Kerry Condon). She's trying to figure out a way to drag a barely-living boar back to her camp in order to feed her disabled husband, and she asks for Rick's help. Rick, however, doesn't entirely trust her. After frisking her for weapons and finding only a knife, he decides to accompany her back to her camp in order to assess the situation with her husband and ask them the "three questions" they need to satisfactorily answer before he'll consider allowing them to join his community. And so the story plays out like a meditative travel movie, with the duo exchanging few words amid managing the troublesome elements. As the storyline goes on, it becomes a bit clear that this woman is off her rocker, and it's a point that is concrete by the time Rick gets back to her camp.

Credit: Gene Page/AMC

Clara's husband is "disabled" alright: he's basically just a head in a bag. We never actually see what's left of Clara's husband, we just know it has a mouth for eating and it fits into a small sack, and the decision not to actually show the husband is one of the smartest of the episode, since whatever we imagine is going to be instantly more horrifying than anything that would actually be shown, as great as the makeup/effects department is on this show. Clara pulls out her knife and attempts to kill Rick, having lured him here to serve as food for her husband. She had wanted the boar since whatever she fed her husband needed to be something living, but Rick provided a better, more easily-transported alternative. Rick is able to avoid Clara's attack and keeps her at gunpoint, but having realized she's failed, Clara decides she can't take it anymore. Despite Rick's pained pleas for her not to do it, Clara drives the knife into her own abdomen, explaining that she simply can't go on any longer without her husband. Her only request is that Rick not kill her once she's turned. As she dies on the grass at his feet, Clara asks Rick to ask her the three questions for entry:

1) How many walkers have you killed?
2) How many people have you killed?
3) Why?

The simplicity of the questions is devastating, if you think about it. They're easily answered, but not always in a satisfying fashion. It would be pretty easy to lie on the third question, and argue that, if you'd killed a person at one point, you had a good reason. But it would be harder if you admitted to killing several, because once Rick drops the third question on you, how would you justify that many homicides? Then again, there are a LOT of raiders out there, as well as genuine crazies like The Governor and Clara herself, so maybe Rick's questions are more about the overall character of the person than the mitigating circumstances of their hardships. Andrew Lincoln turns in a wonderfully understated performance here, communicating Rick's anguish over his failure to help Clara, to convince her that this world is still worth living in. It's a failure of hope, as the world continues to darken by the day, finding ways of beating the courage out of even the most hopeful and optimistic of survivors. Case in point, the episode's close: Rick returns to find that a pig he and Carl had named has sadly died of some unknown ailment. Not long after, we cut to Carl's new friend, Patrick, who seems to be suffering from some form of fever or heat stroke, as he's putting his head under the shower in an attempt to cool down. But it does him no good, as he keels over and dies, presumably from whatever illness killed the pig. And as bad as an airborne illness is, having a walker within the prison walls is arguably worse, as Patrick reanimates in the closing seconds of the episode.

Credit: AMC

"30 Days Without An Accident" is a terrific table-setting episode, as we are reorientated into this world and its characters, showing us how they've acclimated to their changing circumstances, only to have those circumstances flipped around as the episode comes to a close. These next several weeks promise to be some truly harrowing television, and I suspect this season of The Walking Dead might rival last season in terms of a "no one is safe" / "take no prisoners" approach. Should be a thrill.

Thanks for reading my recap and review of The Walking Dead Season 4 Premiere, "30 Days Without An Accident"!